Search Results: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island peoples

The US Catholic Bishops' pastoral letter 'Economic Justice for All' says the extent of the suffering of the poor 'is a measure of how far we are from being a true community'. It is difficult to imagine how justice can be done for the Stolen Generations without compensation, redress and reparation.

I recently spent time with a group of students from a remote community who had been at school down south. After a fight involving other Aboriginal students, they wanted to go home. Senator Jenny Macklin has suggested punishing Aboriginal parents who do not support their children attending school.

Not yet 40, she must live in Perth, hundreds of kilometres from home, to receive dialysis. She is currently in hospital recovering from spinal surgery, and so is separated even from her city-based loved ones. Yet she appears always with a beaming smile.

Prominent Aboriginal elder Tom Calma was brought up Catholic but no longer sees himself as a Christian. While he has gravitated towards his Aboriginal spiritual heritage, he envisions a positive engagement between Christianity and Aboriginal spirituality, and urges the Churches to be open to a hybrid Christianity that embraces both.

There is an emerging Aboriginal middle class. The contested questions in those communities relate to the expensive delivery of services including health, housing and education. The contested issue in the urban community is over self-identification as Aboriginal by persons of mixed descent.

The book was banned after parents complained about its anti-authoritarian attitude: 'Wanja [the dog] loved to chase the [police] van ... to bark at the van ... to bite at the wheel. The police van would drive away.' Like Jewish humour, Aboriginal humour is a response to a history of oppression.

Kevin Rudd stood in the forecourt of Parliament
House Canberra and recalled with great emotion the morning on which he
had welcomed the members of the Stolen Generations. There was no mistaking his sense of solidarity: he knew there and then what it was to be dispossessed,
alienated and outcast.

Not yet 40, she must live in Perth, hundreds of kilometres from home, to receive
dialysis. She is currently in hospital recovering from spinal surgery,
and so is separated even from her city-based loved ones. Yet she appears always with a beaming smile.

On the second anniversary of the apology to Indigenous Australians, we
look instinctively to the Prime Minister to tell us what he's done. He presented his report card to Parliament on Thursday. But he's not the only one who needs to account.

'Tonight I want to reflect in light of the National Human Rights
Consultation how we as Church can do better in promoting justice for
all in our land. Full text from Frank Brennan's 2010 McCosker Oration, 'The Church as Advocate in the Public Square: Lessons from the National Human Rights Consultation'.